THE ART OF COOKING. 9 



are out of bed, by putting meat stews, oatmeal, brown bread, and 

 many kinds of puddings, into the cooker, and simmering all night 

 by the use of a single safe lamp, than in any other way. 



People must be taught that the dinner can be put into the oven 

 when both husband and wife go to the mill to work, and so treated 

 that it may be found perfectly cooked at noon, without requiring 

 any attention in the interval. 



People must be taught that the best of bread, raised with good 

 yeast, can be mixed and kneaded between 12.30 and 1 p. m., placed 

 in a bread-raiser, which will raise it ready for the oven at 6 or 7 

 p. m., and that this bread may be perfectly baked in two hours by 

 the heat of the evening lamp, which at the same time serves to 

 give light for reading or sewing. 



All this can be accomplished with my crude apparatus, but, 

 until some skillful stove-makers take up these inventions and 

 make the ovens in large numbers at low cost, my own efforts must 

 be directed mainly toward ameliorating the condition of the rich, 

 saving the houses of the well-to-do from the heat and smell of the 

 present bad methods, and in this way creating a demand for my 

 ovens which, while made in small numbers by hand-work, are too 

 costly for general use, although in an ordinary family they will 

 pay for themselves in six months. 



I have ventured to call the attention of the Public Health As- 

 sociation to these matters, because I have been led, by the study 

 of the statistics of the cost of subsistence, to certain conclusions 

 which are wholly in the line of your work. 



I venture to ask you if it is not a fact that bad and wasteful 

 methods of consuming food are not a most potent cost of inability 

 to work to the best advantage ? Are they not more promotive 

 of disease, and, in fact, a more subtle cause of want in the midst 

 of abundance, than even the waste on fermented and spirituous 

 liquors ? 



From my own observations, I am of the opinion that dyspepsia 

 is a cause of more disability than intemperance, although this 

 proposition is not capable of statistical demonstration. 



Material life consists in the conversion of forces, or in the ap- 

 plication of material products, to the supply of the necessities of 

 life. In the line of absolute necessity food comes first, clothing 

 next, and shelter third. The supply of the materials for meeting 

 these needs of the body is superabundant ; comfort and welfare 

 depend upon the relative proportion of the materials used, or upon 

 the direction which may be given to the conversion of these forces. 

 The result of each year's work is a given product ; whether that 

 product shall be adequate or otherwise depends almost wholly 

 upon individual intelligence. In respect to the great majority of 

 all who perform the actual manual or mechanical wo^k of produc- 



